Faculty Meetings: Yea or Nay?

I know this is a radical idea so just go with me for a moment.  I only intend it is a thought experiment or hypo if you will.

Over the years, I've experienced faculty meetings that have been mercifully short and faculty meetings that have been disproportionately long given the subject matter under discussion.  I've been at faculty meetings where important subjects were discussed and where important subjects were tabled due to lack of time.  But as the years have gone on, and more and more people (even those who were slower on the uptake 10-15 years ago) have started airing views about important issues via email, it seems that faculty meetings are sometimes just icing on the cake for an issue that has already been discussed in detail via email.

So I started wondering if faculty meetings are actually worth the candle anymore, at least the once-a-month obligatory scheduled meetings that are typically the case for most faculties.  While I don't necessarily like the idea of doing business over email rather than face-to-face, it does seem that a lot of issues are discussed in more detail and with more time/thought devoted to them over email than in person.  And email at least theoretically can accommodate more voices than a time-limited faculty meeting where some folks might be reticent to speak up.  While it's easy to hit 'delete' and ignore email discussions (which may be an argument in favor of face-to-face meetings), it's also easy to tune people out during a meeting or to not show up to a meeting if uninterested in the subject matter.  Also, it's often the case that a faculty member will miss a faculty meeting due to another commitment, but can still use email to express his or her views fully prior to the meeting.

There has been some sociological research suggesting that folks are less civil over email than they would be face-to-face, and we've probably all seen some examples of that in real life.  But is that so terrible?  At least people get to express their views fully.  And if people are uncivil on email, their thoughts are likely to be discounted anyway so it may end up hurting their own position.  Further, if email exchanges become worryingly uncivil (eg bordering on defamatory), the administration can always impose a code of conduct.  I'm sure more than one dean has warned faculty members about the kinds of things that shouldn't appear in emails either for legal reasons or with respect to expectations of collegiality.

I know that the idea of stopping or scaling back monthly faculty meetings might seem wrong on an intuitive level, but it's hard for me to come up with reasons why there should be scheduled monthly faculty meetings.  There are some issues faculties will need to vote on, but promotions and appointments cases are often done through special faculty meetings, rather than at standard monthly meetings.  And other issues requiring a faculty vote could be consolidated and voted on whenever the need arises - or perhaps could be voted on via email?

I don't feel entirely comfortable about raising this issue, but I don't know why given that we do so much over email these days anyway and there seems to be less need for monthly meetings other than to ensure some proportion of the faculty comes together face-to-face to exchange ideas.  Is this a good enough reason, particularly given increasing competing demands on faculty time? 

OK - so everyone let me have it now!  It really is just a thought experiment and I'm interested in what people think.

Comments

[VAP star]

Isn't there some concern about having a paper trail? (I'm thinking of the recently released university emails discussing the Colorado shooter.) I assume live faculty meetings can help maintain confidentiality better than sending emails on a controversial topic, although email sounds great for housekeeping and mundanity.

[Orin Kerr]

I'm with VAP star. At my law school, an "all faculty" e-mail exchange was recently forwarded to and published by Above the Law. That was suboptimal.

[MS]

There can be value in actually meeting but meetings should only be held when there is business to be done, never just to meet, and there should be time limits, which can be enforced via the midday meeting when people will have to leave to teach. Because so many law faculty do so little, faculty meetings can be a source of a huge waste of time. Committee meetings ditto, though these are far easier to handle via email, and again, should never be called just to meet.

[Doug Richmond]

At some public law schools, might not faculty meetings be subject to state open meeting act or regulation requirements? If so, at least in theory, people with impure agendas could attend, thus defeating the confidentiality objective VAP star and Prof. Kerr mention.

[Jacqueline Lipton]

While I sympathize with VAP star and Orin and they make good points, I'm not sure that we're really talking about the same thing. Security is always a problem with emails so if a topic is controversial it can always be scheduled for a face to face meeting (like hiring, appointments, etc.). But even the fact that something is scheduled for a face to face meeting doesn't stop people emailing about it as is currently the case. The idea of only scheduling faculty meetings when they're needed to discuss something sensitive would likely not in and of itself discourage people from exercising bad judgment over email, nor would it presumably encourage them to act that way. People will write unfortunate emails whether or not everyday mundane business is conducted routinely over email, won't they?

[Jeff Yates]

I wrote about a related topic (telecommuting for lawyers - link below) and it seems that people just really, really like their meetings - I think that many people need a live audience for their speeches ;-)

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2012/05/telecommuting-for-lawyers-in-a-digital-age.html

[Bill Reynolds]

One problem is the increase in faculty size--I started teaching 40 years ago and only 25 or so`came to a meeting. The meetings were productive and even fun--lots of humor. Our meetings now have more than 50 persons present and little of substance and less of fun gets discussed. A well-run committeee with goood faculty connections eliminates the need for most of what goes on in faculty meetings.

I believe that Deans often use filler (announcements, etc) to stretch out the meeting because there is so little really on the agenda. (BTW: when I ran appointments during the 90s, I routinely would put our recs at the end of the agenda; the idea was that after much time had been wasted on idiotic conversation, the faculty could ot come to grips with my comm recs. We almost always prevailed without argument.)

[Anon]

I have taught at several law schools and none of them had monthly faculty meetings. I've typically had one faculty meeting at the beginning of the year and a couple at the end of the semester for appointments and tenure or pre-tenure review cases. Occasionally, there are more in the case of a curriculum reform proposal or something like that or in anticipation of a self-study (in which case, there are additional meetings scheduled, but they are more like town halls for discussion than anything else). Monthly meetings sound odd, unless they are just scheduled to hold the date and then cancelled when there is nothing of substance to discuss.

[DCW]

The short answer is yes;have faculty meetings but only when absolutely necessary. Too often monthly faculty meetings come complete with filler best reserved for emails b/c administrations feel they need to have a meeting and since they don't have much to discuss they'll find something to take up the time. Far too much time is wasted in unecessary faculty and committee meetings. And too often those who realize it and choose to attend judiciously are later penalized because their name doesn't show up often enough on the attendance sheets.